# Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3.8 Max

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.8 Max across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-qwen3-8-max
- Last updated: September 17, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 12
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5

## Quick Verdict

Pick Qwen3.8 Max if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Claude Sonnet 5 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Qwen3.8 Max leads overall 71.76 to 69.88.
- The clearest category separation is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 77.5 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 87.4 for Qwen3.8 Max.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is HLE in Knowledge, with scores of 57.4% and 43.6%.
- Qwen3.8 Max is the cheaper option on output tokens, which matters if you expect large responses or heavy interactive use.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.8 Max |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Anthropic | Alibaba |
| Type | Proprietary | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Reasoning | Reasoning |
| Context | 1M | 1M |
| Overall Score | 69.88 | 71.76 |
| Benchmarks Covered | 26 | 60 |
| Pricing (input/output) | $2.00 / $10.00 | Pricing unavailable / Pricing unavailable |

## Category Breakdown

### Agentic

- Winner: Qwen3.8 Max
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 65.9 (Supported · #11/153)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 67.3 (Supported · #9/153)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| Terminal-Bench 3.0 | 14.6% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| BrowseComp | 84.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| HLE w/ tools | 57.4% | 56.2% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| OSWorld-Verified | 81.2% | 86.1% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals) | 74.5% | 67.4% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| ApprenticeBench | 16% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 86.6% | Coming soon |
| CoWorkBench | Coming soon | 74.8% | Coming soon |
| JobBench | Coming soon | 53.4% | Coming soon |
| skillsBench | Coming soon | 70.2% | Coming soon |
| Agents' Last Exam | Coming soon | 52.4% | Coming soon |
| AutomationBench | Coming soon | 27.3% | Coming soon |
| Toolathlon-Verified | Coming soon | 72.5% | Coming soon |
| WideResearch | Coming soon | 81.9% | Coming soon |
| OSWorld 2.0 | Coming soon | 19.4% | Coming soon |
| WebArena-Verified | Coming soon | 66.8% | Coming soon |
| AndroidWorld | Coming soon | 85.3% | Coming soon |
| MobileWorld | Coming soon | 77.8% | Coming soon |

### Coding

- Winner: Claude Sonnet 5
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 64 (Supported · #13/152)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 60.8 (Supported · #20/152)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| SWE-bench Verified | 85.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE-bench Pro | 63.2% | 67.7% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| SWE Multilingual | 78.3% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| SWE Multimodal | 28.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.0 | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| FrontierCode 1.1 Main | 42.7% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| cursorBench32 | 61.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench CII v1 | 89.2% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals) | 82.4% | 87.9% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| SWE-bench (Vals) | 79.6% | 85.6% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| cursorBench40 | 34.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | Coming soon | 86.6% | Coming soon |
| DeepSWE | Coming soon | 56.6% | Coming soon |
| NL2Repo | Coming soon | 55.9% | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE | Coming soon | 73.5% | Coming soon |
| MLS-Bench Lite | Coming soon | 41.0% | Coming soon |
| PaperBench | Coming soon | 93.0% | Coming soon |
| VulcanBench v3 | Coming soon | 81.2% | Coming soon |
| OpenHarmony Bench | Coming soon | 60.8% | Coming soon |
| FrontierSWE v2 | Coming soon | 15.8% | Coming soon |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.5 (#13/48)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 87.4 (#5/48)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| CharXiv | 88.3% | 93.5% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| CharXiv w/o tools | 77% | 88.4% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 82.3% | Coming soon |
| MathVision | Coming soon | 95.2% | Coming soon |
| MathVision w/ Python | Coming soon | 97.7% | Coming soon |
| BabyVision | Coming soon | 82.0% | Coming soon |
| BabyVision w/ Python | Coming soon | 91.3% | Coming soon |
| ZeroBench | Coming soon | 24.0% | Coming soon |
| ZeroBench w/ Python | Coming soon | 49.0% | Coming soon |
| MedXpertQA (MM) | Coming soon | 80.4% | Coming soon |
| ScreenSpot Pro | Coming soon | 84.5% | Coming soon |
| Vision2Web | Coming soon | 69.0% | Coming soon |
| OmniDocBench 1.5 | Coming soon | 92.1% | Coming soon |
| OCRBench V2 | Coming soon | 74.2% | Coming soon |
| CC-OCR | Coming soon | 79.6% | Coming soon |
| RealWorldQA | Coming soon | 88.0% | Coming soon |
| ERQA | Coming soon | 77.8% | Coming soon |
| SimpleVQA | Coming soon | 75.0% | Coming soon |
| PerceptionBench | Coming soon | 63.5% | Coming soon |
| Video-MME (with subtitle) | Coming soon | 90.4% | Coming soon |
| VideoMMMU | Coming soon | 88.7% | Coming soon |
| MMVU | Coming soon | 82.4% | Coming soon |
| MLVU (M-Avg) | Coming soon | 90.8% | Coming soon |
| LVBench | Coming soon | 81.8% | Coming soon |

### Reasoning

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 77.4 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 86.5 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MRCRv2 | Coming soon | 92.9% | Coming soon |
| LongBench v2 | Coming soon | 66.3% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Qwen3.8 Max
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: 66.6 (Supported · #20/183)
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 68.8 (Supported · #17/183)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HLE | 57.4% | 43.6% | Claude Sonnet 5 |
| HLE w/o tools | 43.2% | 43.6% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| HLE-Verified | 31.0% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| LABBench2 | 80.1% | Coming soon | Coming soon |
| GPQA Diamond (Vals) | 88.9% | 93.7% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| MMLU-Pro (Vals) | 87.5% | 88.6% | Qwen3.8 Max |
| GPQA | Coming soon | 92.6% | Coming soon |
| GPQA-D | Coming soon | 92.6% | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Coming soon
- Claude Sonnet 5 public-lane score: Coming soon
- Qwen3.8 Max public-lane score: 90.7 (#18/123)

| Benchmark | Claude Sonnet 5 | Qwen3.8 Max | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFBench | Coming soon | 82.8% | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Claude Sonnet 5 or Qwen3.8 Max?

Qwen3.8 Max is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### Where is the biggest gap between Claude Sonnet 5 and Qwen3.8 Max?

The widest category gap is in multimodal & grounded, where the averages are 77.5 for Claude Sonnet 5 and 87.4 for Qwen3.8 Max.

### How many benchmarks does Claude Sonnet 5 cover on BenchLM?

Claude Sonnet 5 currently has 26 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Qwen3.8 Max cover on BenchLM?

Qwen3.8 Max currently has 60 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Qwen3.8 Max Preview](/compare/claude-sonnet-5-vs-qwen3-8-max-preview)
- [Qwen3.8 Max vs Qwen3.8 Max Preview](/compare/qwen3-8-max-vs-qwen3-8-max-preview)
- [Claude Sonnet 5 vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-claude-sonnet-5)
- [Qwen3.8 Max vs Claude Fable 5.1](/compare/claude-fable-5-1-vs-qwen3-8-max)

## Explore More

- [Claude Sonnet 5 profile](/models/claude-sonnet-5)
- [Qwen3.8 Max profile](/models/qwen3-8-max)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)